Phantoms complete a Seacoast move

Tuesday

Nov 30, 2010 at 3:15 AM

By MIKE ZHEPortsmouth Herald

PORTSMOUTH — Longtime New Hampshire Phantoms general manager Jim DeDeus was driving past Portsmouth High School over the summer when he noticed the construction, a project that would eventually provide the school and city with an artificial turf playing field.

Less than half a year later, a very real agreement is in place for the Phantoms to call Portsmouth their new home.

The Phantoms, a semipro soccer club that for one-and-a-half decades has operated on the fringes of the state's pro sports scene, will play its home games at Portsmouth High School in 2011, DeDeus and city recreation director Rus Wilson said Monday afternoon. Though no contract has been signed, both sides said there are only minor details that need to be ironed out.

The franchise spent the previous seven seasons playing home games in Manchester, mostly at Southern New Hampshire University. But with attendance down to roughly 250 fans per game last summer, team officials began contemplating a move.

"We kind of got lost there," said DeDeus, who's overseen the franchise since its inception in 1996, a run that has also seen it call Keene, Nashua and Amherst home. "We were doing well when we were playing at Singer Park, but then they built (MerchantsAuto.com Stadium) and we moved to the outskirts a little bit.

"Having (AHL) hockey there, (Double-A) baseball, the arena football team that folded, the (Manchester Millrats) basketball team ¿ with all the sports teams there, we needed to go back somewhere where we were the only game in town."

Enter Portsmouth, with its new FieldTurf playing surface at the high school that was installed for the start of the fall season.

The high school's fall sports teams just wrapped up the inaugural season on the field, which is also used by several youth and community organizations. Wilson said that the plan was to eventually rent out some of the available time blocks to more high-profile teams.

"It was on the list of things to do, but certainly not at the top of the list," said Wilson, who brought the plan to the school board, which approved it.

The Phantoms compete in the Northeast Division of the Premier Development League, which sits on the fourth tier of the U.S. soccer pyramid. In baseball terms, with Major League Soccer serving as the big leagues, the PDL would be comparable to Single-A.

"The fact that we have a semipro team in the city ¿ I'm not sure when the last time was that we had something like that," said Wilson.

The Phantoms, who predate the Manchester Monarchs, New Hampshire Fisher Cats and Keene Swamp Bats in this state, enjoyed a nice run in the late 1990s, when they were competing in the third-tier D-3 Pro League. They reached the national semifinals in 1997 and the finals in 1998.

But eventually, with few remaining geographic rivals, and road games that required plane trips and hotel stays — to Bermuda, among other locales — they were voluntarily relegated to the PDL after the 2007 season.

"We were flying everywhere," said DeDeus. "The costs were just out of control."

The Northeast Division of the PDL also includes teams from Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Maine and Canada.

The Phantoms will pay the city of Portsmouth a rental fee similar to the one they were paying at SNHU, said Wilson. Games will be held on Saturday nights or Sundays, times when the field would normally be vacant, with concessions and ticket sales set up much like they would be for a Portsmouth High School football game.

Players who compete in the PDL maintain their amateur status, and those on the Phantoms are not paid. Many collegians play in the league once their school years conclude, including UNH standout Joe Corsello of York, Maine, who played for the Phantoms the last two summers; and striker Sean Coleman of Stratham, currently at Johns Hopkins.

The team's 2011 schedule has not been announced. Tryouts for the club will be held Dec. 11 at Woburn (Mass.) High School.

DeDeus, who lives in Greenland, said the club also considered moving to locations like Salem, Windham and Londonderry, but ultimately chose Portsmouth.

"We're not a big-time franchise like the Monarchs or the Fisher Cats," he said. "We thought this would be a pretty good fit. ... Once we kind of agreed on everything, it was a no-brainer. We felt that Portsmouth and the surrounding towns was an ideal situation."